3-Day: Giving, Baking and Singing our Thanks
Although we have not had much time together over the past week, your children continue to demonstrate their understanding of classroom expectations, show kindness and empathy to one another, and learn and grow through their play. Caroline and I are grateful for their adorable smiles, gentle hugs and sweet words in the classroom. They are a very special group who have done an exceptional job gelling together in our classroom.
Although it's been a bit choppy, we are continuing to learn all about ourselves. Last week, we worked on our self portraits, focusing on our facial features such as our eyes, noses and mouths. We took photos of each child and cut them into four parts. We used mirrors to look at the color of our eyes and made a classroom eye color graph using the "eye portion" of their photos. We were all quite surprised at the number of blue-eyed children in our room!
We will continue to use these photographs for some silly fun next week, learning about ourselves and others around us. We will learn about our senses and talk about our families before moving on to a study of the people in our community.
Today we switched gears and celebrated Thanksgiving. We read Thanksgiving stories and sang some new songs. Ask your child how to say thank you in Sign Language. Here are the words to a song we sang:
(sung to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)
I'm thankful for the sun so bright.
I'm thankful for the stars at night.
Thankful for my family
and all the friends around me.
I am thankful, 'yesseri'
I am thankful, 'yesseri'
We talked a little bit about the first Thanksgiving and what Thanksgiving looks like now.
Your children were easily able to articulate what they were thankful for and we made the traditional Thanksgiving handprint turkey keepsake. Thanks to the hard work of Caroline and Mae's mom Libby, we got them all done in one short morning and were able to send them home today!
The children also participated in making homemade cranberry sauce and were able to help cook it while we played in the Bowen indoor playground.
Melissa from Puddlestompers came to visit us today! She taught us all about animals in winter. We learned words like "hibernation" and "camouflage". We role-played as little bats, eating bugs and flying around to find a cozy attic to hang upside down for a winter slumber. The children even got to touch a real fox skin!
Caroline and I thank all of you for sharing your amazing children with us. They make it rewarding and fun to come to work each day! Please enjoy the upcoming holiday with family and friends. Looking forward to seeing everyone next week for some uninterrupted fun!
Karen and Caroline
#kindness #empathy #allaboutme #eyes #community #Thanksgiving #signlanguage #handprintturkey #winteranimals #hibernation #camouflage